Microsoft India today announced the 4th edition of its worldwide Skype-a-Thon event. The annual 2-day event will be held on November 13 and 14, connecting an estimated half a million students from over 100 countries. Continuing its theme of ‘Open Hearts. Open Minds’, it will allow students to experience new cultures, go on virtual field trips, hear from guest speakers and learn from other students, educators and experts from around the world by traveling virtual miles over Skype over a 48 hour period. Schools located anywhere in India can join Skype-a-thon through a simple online registration process.
The India miles will be inaugurated by Anant Maheshwari, President- Microsoft India.Skype-a-Thon will dwell on diverse topics including conservation, history, computer science, in addition to sharing cultural experiences through song and dance, games, reading, stories, and virtual field trips, exchanging ideas and learning from each other. In India, the discussions will also focus on AI in education, cybersecurity, empathy and inclusiveness.
Microsoft also announced that for every 400 virtual miles traveled by Skype-a-Thon participants, the company will donate to WE, a non-profit organization that helps students internationally. WE’s holistic, sustainable international development model is built on five pillars of impact – Education, Water, Health, Food and Opportunity. Microsoft’s donation will support WE Village’s Education pillar to provide access to education for up to 35000*children and support UN Sustainable Development Goal #4 – Quality Education.
Manish Prakash, Country General Manager-PS, Health and Education, Microsoft India, said
Skype-a-thon is a celebration of the power of connecting students to each other globally, and an opportunity to teach greater empathy and compassion for our planet and for each other. Through sharing stories and projects, playing games, and collaborating on similar subjects, students’ hearts and minds are opened, allowing them to become more engaged global citizens. We invite schools from across the country to join this movement.
Skype-a-thon will also encourage students to engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices.
In 2017, the event saw students and educators participating from 90 countries around the world, travelling over 14.5 million virtual miles. For more information, please visit here.
Technology and businesses are changing at a rapid pace and enterprises have to be more agile in accepting changes and challenges. Companies like Nokia and Kodak that were once considered torch-bearers in their respective businesses were outpaced by their competitors since they showed resistance in adapting to change. The same thinking is also applicable to managers, leaders, as well as employees in an organization. This is where ‘agile thinking’ or an ‘agile mindset’ can make a huge impact on the growth of any business/organization. One of the biggest challenges that enterprises are facing today is how to deal with disruptions arising from fast-paced change. This change is largely driven by technological innovation to the extent that it is forcing enterprises in every sector to put technology to the core [Tech@Core] of their business.
The change is so disruptive and fast that no enterprise regardless of its age/size can take its survival for granted. Hence, enterprises modeled after ‘mechanistic systems’ will struggle to deal with fast-paced change. ‘Enterprise Agility’ is the solution that will enable enterprises to deal with the fast-changing environment, but more importantly, to leverage change for competitive advantage and customer delight. This is the basic premise of Sunil Mundra’s book ‘Enterprise Agility – Being Agile in a Changing World‘ that shows how an enterprise can address the above mentioned problems and thrive in a dynamic business environment. We earlier had a detailed interaction about Agile, his insights into Enterprise Agility, etc.; you can find more details here.
About the Author
Sunil Mundra is a Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks with decades of consulting experience, working with some of the world’s largest enterprises. He has helped organizations tackle their most urgent business challenges and has worked with senior executives to shape and execute their roadmap for change. You can learn more about Sunil through his LinkedIn profile.
Enterprise Agility- Detailed Review
Before we deep-dive into the details of the book. It is very important to have a look at the sentiment of agility as mentioned in the Agile Manifesto – Agility is the ability to both create and respond to change in order to profit in a turbulent business environment. In order to understand agility, we can have a look at a scenario where ‘Your car is sent for servicing and neither Uber/Ola is available. Your end-goal is to reach the office‘. You either take the approach of car-pooling or use an altogether different transport system like the Bangalore metro to beat the traffic. This is where ‘Agile Thought-Process’ kicks in, where you have to come up with options, evaluate their pros and cons, and shortlist the best possible transport option [taking into account parameters like travel time, distance, cost, etc.]. This is a simple example of how an individual can deal with uncertainty, and the impact of ‘Agile Thinking’ becomes multiplied when organizations have to deal with change. This is where ‘Enterprise Agility’ by Sunil Mundra provides a step-by-step guide to facing and accepting uncertainty head-on. There are a lot of subtle comparisons in the book to drive interest and engagement. One such example is the comparison of ‘agility’ or ‘enterprise agility’ to the human body. Below is an excerpt from the book where the author draws that comparison
The approach of enterprise agility must be based on treating the enterprise like a living system, say a human body, rather than treating it like a machine, such as a car. When the machine slows down or breaks, the relevant part of the machine can be fixed or even replaced. However, if the overall health of a human being is not good, it can rarely be cured by just fixing a specific part or parts of the body.
Similar to the example mentioned above, the book talks about mechanisms to achieve optimal agility at the enterprise level, taking the key stakeholders – people, processes, organization structure, governance, technology, customers into consideration and how they can be enabled/leveraged to achieve enterprise agility. The book is partitioned into different sections as mentioned below
Let’s have a detailed look at each of these sections
Part 1 – This section examines the challenges of fast-paced change both from an opportunity and threat perspective. It also showcases how the capabilities underlying agility can help the enterprise to leverage change to its advantage.
Part 2 – This section examines the three foundation blocks of enterprise agility namely; modeling the enterprise of a living system, mindset, and culture and leadership. This section provides a lot of insights on how to migrate from a close-ended system to becoming a living system. It also sheds light on how leaders in an enterprise can maneuver the mindset and promote a culture of agility in the organization.
Part 3 – This section examines the critical components of an enterprise – organization, structure, process, people, technology, governance, customer, and patterns on how to unlock and enhance the agility of these components.
Part 4 – This section is helpful for managers and leaders who manage distributed teams and technology partners. It also shares insights on how to leverage them for enhancing enterprise agility.
Part 5 – The concluding part of the book provides a framework/action plan on how the learning can be implemented in the specific context of an enterprise.
The overall organization of the chapters in the book is uniform since it follows a common structure – Significance, Inhibitors to agility, Enablers of agility, and further references. The book provides detailed insights into Complex Adaptive Systems [CAS]
Complex Adaptive Systems are complex in that they are dynamic networks of interactions, and their relationships are not aggregations of the individual static entities, that is, the behavior of the ensemble is not predicted by the behavior of the components. They are adaptive in that the individual and collective behavior mutate and self-organize corresponding to the change-initiating micro-event or collection of events.
Some of the key characteristics of CAS are
Continuous evolution
Autonomous and self-organizing agents
Agent’s interactions influence system behavior
Agent’s behavior is driven by purpose
Variety as a source of strength
Agents are the change-makers in the CAS and CAS behavior is driven by inter-relationships, interaction, and inter-connectivity of the agents within a system and between a system and its environment. The table below highlights the summary of the implications for businesses, which are derived from the characteristics of a Complex Adaptive System [CAS]
Some of the key-takeaways from Sunil Mundra’s book ‘Enterprise Agility’ are
Drive agility-oriented change across the enterprise.
Understand why agility matters [more than ever] to modern enterprises.
Adopt and influence an Agile mindset in your teams and in your organization.
Understand the concept of a CAS and how to model enterprise and leadership behaviors on CAS characteristics to enhance enterprise agility.
Understand and convey the differences between Agile and True enterprise agility.
Create an enterprise-specific action plan to enhance agility.
Become a champion for enterprise agility.
Recognize the advantages and challenges of distributed teams, and how Agile ways of working can remedy the rough spots.
Enable and motivate your IT partners to adopt Agile ways of working.
Unlike other books on Agile and Agile Methodologies, Enterprise Agility by Sunil Mundra deep dives into the concepts of organizational agility with apt examples and well-developed framework for leaders. The author illustrates how to transition from Agile to agility at scale and sustain it to delight customers. The most interesting part about the book is that author Sunil Mundra has come up with learnings and examples based on his experience in delivery and consulting.
Target Audience
The book is apt for C-level executives, delivery managers, enterprise and leadership coaches, or any person who has influence in enabling change within an organization. The learnings from the book can be used by executives, irrespective of the size and scale of the organization.
You can buy ‘Enterprise Agility: Being Agile in a Changing World’ by Sunil Mundra from here.
Have you read ‘Enterprise Agility’?, please leave your key-learnings in the comments section…
Uber and The International Cricket Council [ICC] announced a world first partnership to support the first ever standalone ICC Women’s World T20 in the West Indies. Uber and the ICC aim to leverage one of the world’s most popular sports to engage the broader cricketing community in a conversation around the important role sport plays in empowering girls and women around the world.
This global partnership will encompass on-the-ground activation in participating WWT20 countries, in addition to the creation of a six-part digital film series featuring the inspiring stories of female cricketers, watch party and match day promotions across Uber and Uber Eats in participating countries. Social media will be engaged to celebrate women in sports and various community outreach programs including sponsorships for aspiring female cricketers to join cricket academies and for fans and families to cheer on their heroes live.
Commenting on the partnership, David Richardson, CEO of the International Cricket Council, said
Uber is a globally recognized brand and one that is committed to the empowerment of women around the world. As a sport we have also made a commitment to grow the women’s game and it will form one of the pillars of our strategy that will be launched early next year. This is a genuine partnership that is focused on our shared values and Uber’s plans are exciting and complement what we’re trying to achieve. The traditional sponsorship model is changing and this collaboration is a reflection of that, it’s about a shared ambition to move women’s cricket forward, tell the story of our sport more broadly and build heroes in our game.
Uber’s Chief International Business Officer, Brooks Entwistle, shared
We are absolutely delighted to be the first ride-sharing and food delivery platform to partner with the ICC for the first ever standalone ICC Women’s World T20. We recognize the best way to change the status quo is to challenge it, and the ICC Women’s World T20 is a powerful showcase of women moving the sport of cricket forward, while uniting and inspiring communities around the world.
Together with the ICC, we are committed to supporting more women in sport, and to inspiring and enabling more girls and women to access opportunities, and become the change agents, world leaders and sports champions of tomorrow.
Uber brand ambassador and Indian Cricket Captain, Virat Kohli, shared
I’m excited to hear that Uber and the ICC are partnering to support the Women’s World T20 in the West Indies. All women representing their countries will become better cricketers, but more importantly, they’ll also serve as role models to encourage other young women and girls to take up cricket, which I believe will empower them to be more focused, competitive and goal oriented.
The ICC Women’s World T20 will be held from 9 to 24 November 2018, during the 2018–19 international cricket season. The 10-team tournament will be played as a standalone event for the first time between Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies.
Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a product subsidiary of Infosys and Efma, a global not-for-profit organization, launched the 10th Annual Study of Innovation in Retail Banking. The report is authored by Jim Marous, Publisher of the Digital Banking Report and Co-Publisher of The Financial Brand. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of the research, the report explores a decade of banking innovation and looks ahead at what’s in store for banking in 2022.
The research, in which over 300 banks globally participated, found that respondents see Open Banking APIs as the top technology for the future of innovation, with it being stronger than ’emerging’ areas such as machine learning, chatbots and RPA. The research found that in the short term, banks will leverage Open Banking for compliance such as the Payment Services Directive [Europe], Unified Payments Interface [India] and New Payments Platform [Australia].
The research also found that overall, organizations are taking a strategic perspective on the need for innovation ROI. In 2017, 31% of firms had an innovation ROI perspective of one year, compared to only 17% this year. In addition, 63% looked for an ROI in 1~3 years as opposed to 54% in 2017.
Respondents believe that retail banks consider digital commerce platforms [such as Alibaba] and technology giants as the innovation leaders for 2022. Similar to previous years, the greatest impact of transformation is expected to be in the areas of payments, mobile wallets and lending in the next three years.
Key findings include
Investment in banking innovation
With legacy technology being identified amongst the top three barriers for innovation, 74% banks are increasing investments in technology modernization.
50% of the organizations believe that product delivery channels followed by new product innovations will be where most innovation will take place in the next four years.
Impact of modern technologies
Open banking APIs are seen as the top technology impacting banking in the next year by 65% of the respondents
Banks rated only a moderate level of organizational readiness to leverage technologies to deliver expected business outcomes for open banking, conversational interfaces and cloud processing.
Deploying and measuring innovation
The need to collaborate with external partners continues to be the highest focus when sourcing talent for innovation.
Innovation over the next 12 months will be delivered through investments in co-innovation with other partners, a dedicated innovation team along with collaboration with large tech firms.
The presence of an innovation officer increased significantly over the past year. In 2017, only 37% of the organizations surveyed had a dedicated executive to lead the innovation process. In 2018, the number jumped to 48%.
Banking in 2022
After existing digital channels [mobile and online], digital assistants, social media and third party channels are expected to be the primary channels for banking by 2022.
Close to half of the respondents believe that less than 40% of the current workload would move to public cloud by 2022.
According to 70% of the respondents, AI is expected to have a significant impact in transforming customer service/support by 2022.
In recent years, banking institutions have been facing disruption head-on, with advancements in customer service, personalization and mobile applications through a combination of Open APIs, AI and machine learning. The 10th edition of this report highlights advancements made in the last decade but also predicts a dramatic transformation in payments, mobile wallets and lending.
Sanat Rao, Chief Business Officer and Global Head, Infosys Finacle, said
The 10th edition of the Innovation in Retail Banking report strongly illustrates the pace at which the traditional banking model is evolving. The need to invest in a solid platform strategy focused on business benefits and more compelling experiences for customers, employees and partners is central to remain competitive. This report will help banks sharpen their digital vision and benchmark their plans with the industry peers.
Jim Marous, Owner and Publisher of the Digital Banking Report and author of Study, said
More than ever, the importance of an innovation culture became apparent for organizations that want to become leaders in both digital transformation and customer experience. There is a significant shift occurring in the banking industry, with more organizations looking to innovate in areas directly impacting the consumer, as opposed to building innovations that only impact efficiency and technology improvements.
Agriculture plays a vital role in India’s economy. It contributes around 17% to GDP and employs more than 50% of the total workforce. Despite this, agriculture growth has been sluggish and farmers have failed to get fair value for their produce. The Green and White Revolution have helped India attain self-sufficiency in food-grain and milk respectively but subsequent governments have failed to address the systemic issues prevalent in the agriculture sector. Instead, governments have relied on subsidies and farm loan waiver to achieve short-term goals without any concrete policy measures to make farming sustainable. These short-term measures help farmers but have a cascading effect on the overall state of the economy. With growing dependence on monsoon, the state of agriculture and farmers continues to be dismal thereby making agriculture non-profitable.
The problems in agriculture are many but the current government’s emphasis on technology towards making agriculture sustainable and profitable will go a long way in addressing some of the key components.
In Agriculture, availability of real time information at the right time is a major issue. Lack of information at proper time causes huge loss to farmers. Keeping in mind the need to make farming more sustainable and viable, technology is one of the top priorities of the government. There still exist large productivity gaps in the potential and the realized farm output and with development and infusion of new technologies our farm production will go up to meet the rising domestic food demand.
Technology can help improve farmers’ lives in a number of ways – to know the health of the soil and help him choose from a variety of crops that can be grown; forecasting the seasonal conditions in advance; intensification and diversification of farming in order to increase productivity and farmers’ income; diversify towards other allied occupations as well like dairy and forestry; conservation of water, rain water harvesting, construction of check dams, drip and sprinkler irrigation; infrastructure like rural roads, dependable quality power, godowns, cold storage facilities, refrigerated vans and market yards; food processing; timely credit facilities at reasonable interest rates and farmer-friendly insurance policies.
Many experts believe that the future of sustainability relies mainly on the agricultural sector’s ability to continually develop and improve technology. Types of Agriculture Technology:
Development of nutritional efficiencies
Farming equipment
Software for feed processing, farm management, and production
Development of pesticides
Genetic modification techniques
Electronic Marketing
Over the centuries, as farmers have adopted more technology in their pursuit of greater yields, the belief that ‘bigger is better’ has come to dominate farming. Keeping an eye on it, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has initiated technological intervention in various aspects of agriculture like Soil health card, animal husbandry, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna etc and also launched five major mobile apps for the welfare of farmers which can be downloaded from google play store as well as from MKisan.
Skill Development in Agriculture
For the first time during 2016-17, skill training programme are being conducted by DAC&FW from Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna [RKVY] funds in collaboration with Extension Division of ICAR and Agriculture Skill Council of India [ASCI]. Also, the government is promoting Geo-Tagging of agriculture assets created under RKVY. More than 1.5 Lakh infrastructure/assets have been created under this scheme in horticulture, fisheries, dairy and livestock breeding. With the help of space technology, farmers will be able to utilize pesticide/residue testing labs, storage infrastructure and market-related information on time.
Agriculture Marketing
Towards this, the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare has initiated and is implementing various schemes for our farmers. For strengthening the Agricultural Market Information System [AMIS] in India using innovative methods and digital technology, e-NAM is a live example of Agricultural Technology in India. eNAM is a device to create national network of physical mandis which can be accessed online. It seeks to leverage the physical infrastructure of the mandis through an online trading portal, enabling buyers situated even outside to participate in trading at the local level.
Animal Husbandry
Agriculture technology advances and methods of modern farming focus on efficiency and increased output. Farming technology helps address a variety of problems livestock farmers face, including water scarcity, pollution from manure and the animal’s access to nutrition. The goal of Agricultural Technologies area: Reducing pollution; managing water consumption; maintaining the health of livestock and crops; and Promoting biodiversity.
Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna
The inclusion of technological interventions will address the issues of large number of Crop Cutting Experiments [CCE] being conducted during short harvesting window with limited manpower. Such technology based solutions will help in achieving the objective with limited resource, more accuracy, resulting in timely settlement of claims and will further facilitate to reduce the unit area of insurance to a level lower than the present village/village panchayat level.
Soil Health card Scheme [SHC]
Through the help of technology, Soil health card is providing information to farmers on nutrient status of their soil along with recommendation on appropriate dosage of nutrients to be applied for improving soil health and its fertility.
Dissemination of technology to farmers and stakeholders
Radio and Doordarshan has been a key partner in the dissemination of Information and Communication Technology to farmers and other stakeholders. Through this, it has been working for providing information to farmers for decades. India is going through a phase of Digital Revolution and Mobile Revolution. A farmer can get his all queries answered by calling free on Kisan Call Center [18001801551]. If the farmers are illiterate or less educated they can also receive recorded messages.
The apps have helped farmers access a wide range of information.
Kisan Suvidha – The farmers can obtain information sitting at home about weather, market prices, crop diseases, identification & treatment of pests along with the advice from agricultural experts.
PUSA Krishi – Information about improved verities of agriculture and horticulture as well as latest techniques.
Agri Market – Information about prevailing prices in the mandis spread within 50 kms.
Crop Insurance – All information related to crop insurance.
Crop Cutting Experiment [CCE] – For conducting crop cutting experiments.
We have reliably learnt how technology in Agriculture can help in the production and marketing for the benefit of farmers and consumers. The prime power to decide when, to whom, where and at what price to sell the produce should lie with the farmer. The system that exists between the farmer and the end-consumer is slowly being scrapped through the use of technology.
About the Author
Bidwan Kishore Raymohapatra has Master of Business Administration in Management from Biju Patnaik University of Technology, Orissa. He has more than 8 years of experience in research and methodology, out of this around 4 years experience in Agriculture Sector. He possesses good knowledge on Business Management of Publication and Information System work in Agriculture Ministry.
Ather Energy, India’s first locally designed and manufactured intelligent scooter brand, has added additional subscription plans for the Ather 450 & 340, based on the success of Ather One, the complete hassle free ownership plan. The new plans will offer more flexibility to the customer to choose services of their choice based on their usage. Public charging at AtherGrid will remain free till 31st of December 2019 for all Ather customers.
Ather One, Ather Energy’s flagship plan, will continue being available, and customers will enjoy its free services for a year from their date of delivery. Ather One has been designed to manage all the hassles of the current automobile ownership. The plan covers all expenses & scooter maintenance, including data charges, public fast charging, home charging expenses, periodic service including consumables and roadside assistance.
Upon completion of their the first year, customers will be free to migrate to any other plan of their choice. Since flexibility in choosing services basis usage and individual preference was a pertinent ask, Ather Energy’s new plans will cater to requirements on demand. Ather scooters being intelligent mobility solutions, data will be a constant feature across the plans that will help the auto company understand individual’s ride, scooter’s health, riding conditions and subsequently, push over-the-air updates, provide ride recommendations and run services like navigation.
For individuals intending to pre-order from today, Ather Service plan will be applicable for free for a limited period. Free Ather One plan for pre-order customers stands discontinued from 31st October, 2018.
About Ather Energy
Co-founded in 2013 by IIT Madras graduates – Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, Ather Energy is one the few automotive startups in India. The company has designed India’s first truly intelligent electric scooters – Ather 450 & Ather 340 and is backed by the founders of Flipkart, Tiger Global and Hero Motocorp. Ather Energy has filed 43 patent applications along with 11 international patent applications and 122 design registrations of their products that have been designed and made in India.
In today’s globalized world, disease outbreaks do not stop at national borders. A health threat anywhere is a health threat everywhere. Efforts taken by the United Nations [UN], World Health Organization [WHO] and Centre for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] in conjunction with the healthcare efforts taken up by various governments, NGOs, Research Institutions, Branded Pharma Companies etc. have managed to reduce the impact of Communicable Diseases and as per 2016 WHO data, Lower Respiratory Tract Infection is the only Communicable Disease that features in the list of Top 10 Diseases Causing Death. Globally. And hence, in today’s world, it’s not enough to only focus on vaccination and cure but it’s equally important to do effective reporting to control the cross border movement.
Image Source – BlockChain
This is a perfect use case for Blockchain!
Using blockchain technology to record infected person’s information on a distributed ledger can allow stakeholders in different countries, conditional access to a single source of truth. A patient’s health data can be recorded on a ledger as a transaction with a time stamped audit trail. This makes Communicable Disease information more secure [patient data is encrypted], can take out the inefficiencies with current reporting practices of sending emails or some other form of non-trusted way of reporting data and real time distribution of data to research centres, quarantine facilities, Points of Entries [POEs] etc.
A centralized system to upload infection and infected party related data is the fastest and the most efficient way of reporting them, within and across border. But security is a major concern for any Healthcare data, especially when it’s about an individual, who is infected by a Communicable Disease. Any mistake therein, can prove really expensive. Hence any system used for this purpose need to be highly secure. Not all record sharing system, using the internet, will be secure. The system might be able to share data real time but the quality of data may be questioned. They might become the hackers’ target.
Blockchain Technology, with its built-in security will be able to address these concerns. Each relevant party can be a node in the chain, and on-boarding a node can also be monitored and approved by an International Organization, like WHO, in this particular case, given the required confidentiality. Blockchain Technology has the underlying trust infrastructure built in. It doesn’t require validation by a centralized authority. Hence it’s faster and real time. Furthermore, Blockchain also removes the need for any intermediary, thereby reducing the cost of operations.
In fact, Blockchain has been garnering substantial attention across industries, with VC’s investing over USD 1.4 billion in the technology in the past 3 years. The World Economic Forum estimates 10% of the global GDP to be stored using Blockchain by 2027.
The top five advantages of Blockchain technology are:
Greater transparency
Enhanced security
Improved traceability
Increased efficiency and speed
Reduced cost
Aren’t they all supremely important for reporting cross-border Communicable Disease cases, a challenge the whole world is trying to grapple with?
About the author
Mohua Sengupta is the EVP & Global Head at Services at 3i Infotech Ltd. More details about her can be found here
We all know that website load times must be as fast as possible, but everyone has a second or two to spare, right? Online, a second or two might as well be a year. Web surfers don’t have the patience to give you those couple of extra seconds that it takes your site to load.
That depends on the person checking out your site. That said, page loading time had better be five seconds or less. If it takes more than that, you’ve lost 74% of your visitors already. The stats are sobering – just a single second delay in load time means you’ve lost about 11% of your views.
It all gives new meaning to the phrase, “Make every second count.” You can learn more about how exactly a slow low time impacts your web traffic in the infographic from Hosting Tribunal below.
Have a look and see exactly how much impact those extra few seconds have. For now, though, let’s look at ways that you can improve your website’s load time.
Improving Your Website’s Load Time
A website is essentially little more than a digital file. The more information contained in the file, the bigger the file is and the longer it will take to load. Photos, videos, and animations are the ‘gas guzzlers’ of the digital world.
A high-resolution photo or video that has not been web-optimized significantly impacts the size of your ‘file’. It’s a bit of a catch-22 situation. We know that visual media are better for capturing the attention of web surfers, but there is a danger that they could bloat our websites. How do we overcome this issue?
Start with the photos that you want to post. Make copies of all of the photos, and work with the copies. That way, if something goes wrong during the editing process, the originals will still be fine. Using a program like Photoshop, resize them so that they have smaller dimensions. Try cutting the size by at least half. This won’t impact the photo quality, and they will still display fine, but they will require less bandwidth to be displayed on the end user’s screen.
While you’re at it, check the quality of the image. Now, for many years all the advice out there has been to use high-quality images. Do we throw this advice out of the window? Not really, we just amend our idea of what is meant by a high-quality image.
If you save a photo at a medium quality level rather than a higher setting, it won’t make much difference to the viewer. You will, however, save a lot of megabytes by doing this and reduce the file size significantly. The same applies to the resolution that videos are saved at, but here you’ll need to play around a little to see what looks best. Take a look at all the visual elements of the site and make sure that the file sizes are reduced as much as possible. That will help you speed up a slow load time substantially.
To understand the real impact speed has on online presence, go through this insightful graphic
